I keep seeing sites that show a new or upcoming tablet computer and label it as the “iPad Killer” and then it turns out it is in fact not as good or cheap as they expected or worse, the device never see’s the light of day. The iPad has some nice things going for it such as light, well made, large screen, multi touch display, responsive and generally the applications just work. The down side I think most people look are the price (cheapest model in the UK is £439), the fact you need iTunes to even make it work, no way to plug in your own media, no webcam, no way to install your own applications of choice (unless your jailbreak the device) and the fact most apps seems to cost money. I have a feeling we are going to get flooded with devices in 2011 that look and feel every similar to the iPad such as the Samsung Tab and other of its type.

What are the main things a device needs?

I have messed with enough tablet / touch screen devices in my time to start to get a feel for what is required to make the device work. Battery life is very important, I do not want a tablet that has a battery life of 2 hours max (when not doing anything major) and having to be tied a power plug all of the time. My Netbook for example lasts for 1 Hour, this is not acceptable.

The next thing that matters to me is responsiveness of the screen, if I am stabbing at icons or typing on the on-screen keyboard, I need it to register 1st time. Far too many devices have cheap displays (to keep the price very low) and this impacts on a person using it. Some of the Windows Tablet computers I have used feels like I’m trying to push my finger through the screen just to press the X to close the window down.

Speed – When a device stops responding while I am trying to run a program of some sort, this is just so annoying. My HTC Hero (which has a 600Mhz CPU) does this more often than not when I am installing a program, running an intensive program and so forth. I feel with these devices, it is like going back to 1980′s computers to be frank.

Price – When I am looking at prices of Laptops, I do not compare on price alone but what is inside the box and I am happy to pay half for often a faster and better laptop then something with the word Sony or Apple on there. The same can be said of Tablet’s – at the moment the only real competitor is Apple but expect this to change fast.

Competitors offer more for less?

On the iPad there is no Camera, no way to insert more memory cards, hard wired to iTunes to get the device going and finally no way to install your own programs. If you look at the tablets out now by Samsung for exmaple or even the cheap £150 10″ model as Toy’R'Us – they have all of these and more.

The problem with these devices is simple, the £150 Tablet which seems a bargain does not have Multi touch for a start plus Android is great for a phone but not so good for a tablet. We may not have seen the iPad killer just yet but as history has shown us, apple are slow to react to changes and only bring out a device once a year, in the same time many companies will be bringing out better and better devices – it’s only a matter of time.

Netbooks are often seen as not only been very portable but lasting longer then the equivalent laptop and one of the reasons I bought one all them years ago was to save me from having to carry out a normal sized laptop which never seen to last the stated life span on battery. Recently I choose to install Jolicloud onto my said netbook and while I was there, I wanted to see just how long it might last me on battery power – the results were a lot less then I expected.

Acer Aspire One A150

I bought this netbook when they first come out and I remember making sure I bought one with the least amount of Ram but a decent sized hard drive (120Gigs). The Specifications reads Intel Atom N270 / 1.6 GHz, 1.5Gig Ram, 120Gig Hard Drive, 8.9″ TFT running at 1024×600, a 3-cell Lithium Ion battery with a claimed run time of upto 3 hours and it is 1KG.I have replaced the wireless card in this with a Dell Wireless N Model (when I was using this as a Hackintosh).

The test

I ran BBC iPlayer which played a movie (dawn of the dead) which is using the screen, the wireless and the hard disk as it streams the movie. From a full charge, 30 Minitues later and the battery is down to 50%, so given this, if you wanted to watch a movie on battery alone – you will run short way before the movie is finished, in fact you will get half way through.

Hibernation

I closed the lid and it put the laptop into hibernation mode, thus saving battery, upon opening the lid, nothing happened. I had to press the power button for the netbook to wake up. It was a shame it never had some sort of quick suspend feature as this is one of the reasons why an Apple laptop is so good on battery, if you close the lid on an Apple Laptop, it is saves power and goes to sleep – open the lid and it is back to life.

I know a friend of mine took a train journey to Scotland – a good 5 hours I think to get there and he managed to use Apple Laptop all the way (on and off) and even had enough power left when he got to the other end before it needed power – yet here we have a netbook seeming to struggle keeping alive for one hour.

6 Cell Battery

You can get a 6 Cell Battery which is claimed at 8-9 hours, this adds of course weight and bulk to a small computer. You have to think how they test these laptops to get to the claimed 3 Hours, maybe that’s how long it lasts if it is doing nothing?

I have now owned and used the HTC Hero G2 Touch for a couple of months now and felt it was time to spill the beans on both the good and bad side of this phone. A lot of people will happily ignore the bad points on some reviews as they are now locked into a long contract but I do not believe in hiding the things that should just work.

The Good

The size of the phone is very small and thin – I have no trouble carrying this around in either my Jean’s pocket or my suit trousers and the weight does not come into question. I have not had a single case of the phone doing mad things while in my pocket, by comparison the Sony W850 I had liked to text and call people all the time.

I like the fact it takes Micro SD Cards which means I can go out and buy extra and/or larger cards to suit, swapping the cards did not prove difficult at all and can be done with the phone on. I have yet to upgrade from the supplied 2GIG card which holds quite a few applications as well as a collection of music.

There is a varied amount of application on offer and the phone offer’s multi touch, the applications all have ratings which help pick out the good from the bad and most I have come across are free. I would prefer if the paid apps had a demo mode and let me install them to see if I want to buy them rather then pay and hope for the best that they do what they say on the can.

The Bad

Battery Life – this is the most major bad point I can say right now and in reality I charge this phone each night. I spent a day at work patching in network points and listened to some music stored on the card plus making a few phone calls, checking mail and such and the battery used 1/4 of it power (this is good). Another day I drove 120 miles to see the family and used the GPS function, it had almost ran out of battery by 4pm. Heavy use of the 3G and/or wireless will kill the battery it seems.

The phone goes to sleep while on a call, not good if you need to press a numbered button and you end off killing the call instead. When the phone rings – the screen is still locked, maybe this is something I need to get used to I guess. It is fiddly to switch to Speaker phone mode and the whole calling experience is in fact flawed. While using the supplied hands free headphones – I managed to start the music in the middle of a call – not good.

Speed – the whole thing seems very slow to use and could do with some updates to be honest and I need to speak about the GPS part. This is not a replacement for a GPS, it kept telling me to turn left on a Major road where there was no left turn, I think it was referring to much later on in the journey and it kept saying “Pay Attention”.

Conclusion

It is a good phone but they need to re-think when putting these phones out that Battery life is mega important. It would be easier to buy the individual parts (such as GPS for your car) then trying to let the phone do everything.